Chicago Shows Affection for ‘Prelude to Kiss’

While South Coast Repertory’s David Emmes is in New York checking the progress of two plays that originated at SCR, the producers of yet another play launched at Orange County’s top professional theater have been beating SCR’s drum by proxy, though not by name, in Chicago.

“Prelude to a Kiss,” which ran at SCR in 1988 and eventually went on to Broadway in a rewritten version before being made into a movie (still unreleased), recently set a record at Chicago’s Wellington Theater with a 49-week run and box-office revenues of $2.4 million.

The bittersweet comedy by Craig Lucas “was the longest-running, highest-grossing show the Wellington has ever had,” Cheryl Lewin said Wednesday. Lewin, the press agent for backers of the Chicago stage production, said the show ran from Feb. 14, 1991, to Jan. 19, 1992, in the 519-seat house, although it had been pre-sold to only 3,000 subscribers.

Emmes, SCR’s producing artistic director, is taking a look this week at a new Broadway version of Howard Korder’s “Search and Destroy” (opening Feb. 28), and an already acclaimed off-Broadway production of Donald Margulies’ “Sight Unseen”--both originally commissioned, developed and given their world premieres at SCR.